Amazon’s head boffin Rohit Prasad said that the bookseller’s personal software assistant Alexa would be far smarter if it had a robot body and cameras to move around in the real world., Addressing the assorted throngs at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital AI conference in San Francisco Prasad said: “The only way to make smart assistants really smart is to give it [sic] eyes and let it explore the world”.

The days of skilled brick-layers making a fortune are coming to a close after a bricklaying robot named Hadrian was described in 2015 by Australian firm Fastbrick Robotics as capable of building the brick shell of a house in a matter of days, and it has now managed to complete the task.